The Technique: Fry Your Pie

News flash: You don't need a brick oven in your kitchen to make a pizza with that perfect chewy-inside, crispy-outside crust. You just need a cast-iron skillet and a little vegetable oil

First off: Pizza fritta, as the Neapolitans call it, is not some gastro-abomination à la the deep-fried Twinkie. It's a traditional street food from Southern Italy with a beautifully blistered, crackling crust.

To achieve that holy grail, the dough takes a quick bath in a skillet of popping-hot oil, gets layered with ingredients, then finishes in the oven. Or in your case, the broiler. Because you can make pizza fritta at home in less time than it takes for the stoner delivery guy to show up.

Mix your own dough if you enjoy unnecessary hassles, but you'll get as delicious a pie if you buy premade dough from a market or pizzeria (just ask). What you shouldn't settle for is a boring Margherita pizza. Ours uses a puttanesca sauce, since the spicy mix of fresh tomatoes and briny bits like olives, capers, and anchovies (skip 'em if you hate 'em) is the perfect foil for the chewy, crispy crust.

1. Mix the tomatoes, shallot, garlic, anchovies, olives, capers, and red-pepper flakes, then salt to taste in a large mixing bowl.

2. Transfer the dough to a work surface and divide in two. Roll each piece of dough into an eleven-inch circle.

3. Preheat the oven's broiler.

4. In a 12-inch skillet, pour in 1/2 inch of vegetable oil. Heat on medium-high until the oil temperature reaches 375 degrees (if you have a food thermometer) or until you can toss in a pea-sized ball of dough and watch it get crispy within 1 second.

5. Carefully lower one of the rounds into the hot oil and fry it about 90 seconds per side, or until it's golden brown. Repeat with the other round.

6. Transfer the fried dough to a baking sheet. Slather on the sauce, add the mozz, then shove the pies into the broiler for 4 to 6 minutes. You'll know they're done when the cheese bubbles and the crust chars a bit.

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